Hi

I'm wondering about MorphOS price. At the moment it's 150 euro. It's a lot and not. For me it's allright, i can afford it. Evenif the price would be higher I stilll will be able to pay as much as it needed to get my favourite system.

But at the moment MOSTEAM is trying to get new users with MOS 2.4 focused on Mac Mini support. There are some people which are getting new MorphOS but not registering it. They are complaining about high price of the system.

It's just a science fiction but let's say: MOSTEAM is lowering price for i'd say 75 quid (euro). Let's say that they will get 2 times more users than they would with 150e price. They are not getting any more profits but they are not loosing any money as well. But we would have 2 times more new users..

Is there any chance that MOSTEAM will decrease the price in the future? What is the interest in new 2.4 version? And finally - why there is no advertisement at all to try to get a new users in our small community?

Back before the team even decided to sell it several polls were done and the 75 euro/dollar point was decided fair by the most people. However the team went with the current price and as it stands they are very set on keeping it at that point as far as I know.

I am one of the people that cant pat the 150 euros to register, so I am stuck with it in demo. I also sold my Pegasos 2 machine because of this price.

It's worth the price.

Mac Mini arrived this morning less the DVI/VGA adapter. Won an Apple keyboard and mouse..Arriving mid week I Hope. I will register and pay the price. But how? When MorphOS Demo is on the Mini Mac is there a path to register it which tells how/
tia
Osco

I was waiting for OS4 to port to the mac mini. No longer waiting

What is Windows 7 selling for/?

@osco

You just need to run Tools/RegTool program. Follow instructions from there.

Osco: ant there is the edit option as well..

Windows 7 is about $40CAD + tax if you are a student. Pretty cheap.

But what does that have to do with MorphOS? If we were selling millions of copies of MorphOS I think the price would be down ;) But they are selling hundreds of copies only... :(

@HammerD, Yes, but I think many people here and elsewhere agree with the philosophy that the team may actually make more money, if they lowered the price of the license, because it would sell many more copies. This topic has been beat to death too many times though, and as I have written before, there is no guarantee how many more copies would sell if the price was lowered by 20 Euros, 30 Euros, 40 Euros, etc.

Personally I would like to see it lowered somewhat so we could get more registered users and try to grow the community a little, but that is only my personal opinion. Maybe the MOS Dev Team will come to the same conclusion and alter the license fee some time in the future, or maybe they just figure that this really is just a hobby OS and it will never be any bigger than it is right now. You have to admit that it appears we are losing users much faster than we are gaining any back, or making new ones.

@amigadave
You are right, we can't know what are the plans of MOS team. What i would really like is that a sponsor like Genesi stands behind Morphos by giving them some money, so MOS can become cheaper, much cheaper.

With the price of 50-60 euros i believe that at least 1000 new users will arive. Most of them would be die-hard OS4 fans, others would be ex-amiga users interested in new OS for their old mac mini's.

Also, new versions should be charged for 5-10 euros, not a cent bigger. So if mos team have a base of 2000 users x 5 euros = 10 000 euros. Not a big money for a team, but a big chance of fast expanding user base. I am pretty convinced that a 2000-5000 new users would come in a year or two.

The big problem is actually a marketing. ex-amiga users can hardly know of MOS so a big campaign would be needed. Alos, a couple of guys should promote MOS on OSX sites, so people can become aware of it. It is a long-run but would be payed-of for sure.

It's expensive but I am fine with the 150? . At least they deliver the goods.... not that long ago everybody tought MorphOS was a closed case. 150 Euro for a licence is far better then 0 Euro because there is nothing to buy.

And for the people in the USA.. you can hardly blame the MorhpOS team for your messed up economy. If they would change the price just for the USA, ... then why not for people from other countries where 150? is probably worth 2 weeks of food on the table.

And yes having to pay another 150? when you have a second machine and not being able to transfer the license to a new and faster machine... that sucks.

But when they would allow that, it is even not going to take 1 day before the first guy is going to abuse that and resell his so called "second licence" .

Yea, the price is whats keeping me from registering it on My Mac Mini right now.
US $225 is pretty high. I'm just going to start putting aside some cash here and there to try and save up. It's going to take awhile though......

Well I've bought 3 copies, Peg 2, at the starting offer, one for the Efika, and now for the Mac Mini. Both the last two at the full 150euro.


Why because I'm an ejiot. Would like to support the MorphOS team, but even I think it's grossly overpriced, after a bit of shopping around I bought a family box set of Mac Leopard/ iworks/ilife for less that the price of a single morphOS license.

Drop the price and you'll get non-amigish owners of macminis trying it out, and maybe converting to the dark light side, at that price they might try it, but I can't see many takers.

Mac Minis with only 512mb of ram is a bit slow on Tiger/Leopard and I've not tried Linux on macmini, but I have on Power Macs, and frankly it's not good, Debian would only see 1 CPU, and the sound didn't work, Ubuntu wouldn't get past the install until I'd mounted the CD that it'd booted from (?) Yellow Dog was, well Yellow Dog. I could probably have got them working, but lifes too short.

So a lightweight replacement for MacOS X could work, but not at 150 euro.

[ Edited by stephen_robinson on 2009/10/25 13:50 ]

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Well as for me it's not so much a matter of price, but of policy.
AmigaOS4, you buy it, you have the CD, period, you have it and you're
free to make wathever you want with it. Not with MorphOS2.x, you
are forced to use a registration utility and obtain a key which binds you to
that hardware, and when you have to change it (because it breaks or
you want to pass to a mac mini or whatever new hardware) you must
buy it again.
Also I don't want any PayPal account. A more flexible method for payment
(credit card, bank transfer, etc) would have been preferred by me.

So I'm still with MOS 1.4.5.
Strange this topic, I really believed MOS 1.x users were extinguished, but
now it looks there're still some. If you have some troubles with MOS 1.4.5
now (new apps no longer working, etc) you're pretty alone. They're still
out there, instead. Oh well.

I located in the states. What country gets the tax?

@elena

just a few remarks though:

- if the machine breaks, a key can be generated freely for the new machine. Of course, it needs some kind of proof the machine was really broken.
- Paypal is preferred, but you can still contact support for other payment methods
- Not all new applications are 1.4.5-hostile. The ones that entirely rely on new features (for instance sbars) of course don't work, but many others do. My applications do (at least, I try). :)

[ Edited by Fab on 2009/10/25 16:15 ]

Mind you, I'd take a copy of MorphOS for my Powermac, even at 150Euro....

Wonder if that will happen soon???

Sorry, off subject I know.

I bought one 2.0 license of MorphOS, when I had 3 Peg2s and 1 PEG1.
Its a good OS, but I'm really pissed about the hardware lock.

I had two homes and I had to transfer the whole PEG, just for the MorphOS-License, although I had a PEG2 at each home.
So I took a look at Amiga OS4, which doesn't lock this way.

If Mos-Team wants to keep its users, they should think about people with multiple machines.
I had to pay 450Euros .. so I spent 150Euros and sold 1 PEG2 and the PEG1.

If one of the next upgrades of MOS is so expensive again, I'll sell the rest or just switch completely to AmigaOS4.

How is MOS-Team expecting to create something like a "comunity" with this license policy ?

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As expensive as "free"... It will be hard to make them cheaper, unless we give you some money with it, maybe.

Please note that in case of OS4 you had to pay for 4.0, than again for 4.1, and (probably) for every single +0.1 you'll want.

Maybe they just use a different kind of numbering.
AmigaOS4.1 got a free quickfix, maybe they should have named it 4.2 ?

To get me right:
I bought Pegs because of MorphOS. I got one license of MorphOS2.0 and one license of AmigaOS4.1. ( Which are both more expensive than the much more featureloaded Linux oder Windows-OS.)

If one of my PEGs dies, I'll get an other one and put AmigaOS4 on it an it'll work. With MorphOS, I have to hope, there's still someone which I can prove, that my old PEG is dead and who will give me a adapted key..

I allready own some very expensive DSP-cards, which have a similar lock. The company faced bankcrupty and then the card, which the software was locked on, died. Software of 400 Euros became worthless ...

MorphOS is a small team, I cannot tell, if it'll be existent in 2 Years from now. PEGs will die sometime in the future.
This is a retro marked, not a corporate software business.

I think Stephen Robinson summed it up quite well already, but I add my 150 ct anyway.
Genrally I haven't regreted a minute to register my 2 copies of MorpOS. So the price seems to be kind of okay to me. But I guess I am rather belonging to the small group of addicts with a walled filled (more or less that is!) with plenty of ???. Means I live in EUROland and even if I would be on welfare money (HartzIV) I probably could afford to register a copy if I really wanted it (would be hard though, I guess). But to rely on those crazy addicts seems not the best strategy to increase the user base...
There are two or three issues with the price.
1st: For those outside EUROland (and Switzeland or Norway or some ararbic emirates) 150 EUR is a lot of money. It is ot only the US. I guess for the felt value one US$ equals 1 EUR. Seems that a locens is subjectively 1.5 times as expensive in the US. But what about Poland for Example. Typical wages in Poland are about the same ammount of ZL (3332 ZL) that the typical working German gets in EURs (about 2570EUR) (US a bit less tthan 3000 US$). 4.2 ZL equal one EUR. So, subjectively in Poland a MorphOS key is 3.2 times more expensive. I think everone can calculate more examples and could endlessly philosophy about equity...
2nd: Psychology of sales. Everyone knows these #?9 prices. The trick is cheap and old and everyone knos this psycholgical trick. But still it works. A price of 149 would sell better than 150. Even these both prices are virtually equal - and everyone knows that. But still it works.
Also 129 would outclass 149. The best choice of course woud be the good old 99.- price tag. About 100 is a fixed sum. And 99 are still suggest a kind of a bargain. 99.- is a good price. It implies to be less than 100 (we all know it is 100 but we cannot escape the trick of the 99), You really need good reasons to cross the 100 barrier.
3rd: Well, the bound to one mascihine thing. I'd say it is okay, but it defintely doesn't make the registration and the high price more appealing. If the price gets dropped to 99.- I'd say keeping the maschine lock is okay.

I end this thoughts with my impression that the MorphOS-team is pretty aware of those issues. Well as informatic guys probably not so much about the psychology of prices (there is also the theory that an even price tag like 100.- gets percepted as fair and trusty, but reality shows that the 99.- works better on average). I hope they think about it. And even if I paid the full 150.- I'd say hooray the day the fee gets lowered, because I think it will yield more users.

One last thing: Even while my wallet is not empty I decided not to register all my three maschines capable of MorphOS, but only my Mini and Efika, my good old (over 7 yrs now!) Peg is kept on 1.4.5 (which also works very well!).

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Yeah, it would be great if some investor would step in and support the development of MOS again, but I doubt it will be Genesi again. I think they have lost enough money trying to support MOS in the past. I do think that it might be possible to find someone else to support MOS as an investor now that 2.4 is released for the MacMini and that there is a good chance that 2.5 will run on the eMac and PowerBook, and maybe even the iBook. If 2.4 were presented the right way to an interested investor, they might be able to see it's potential and put forth some development money that could lower the license fee.

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Yes, I agree at that price point there would be a flood of AOS4.x users and ex-Amiga users buying licenses for MOS, but you must also realize that the MOS Dev Team has already released the demo version that is fully functional at NO COST at all, for all of those mentioned people above to try MOS and decide if it is right for them. One of the problems is that no matter how unfair it is, a comparison between the the cost of a MOS license and that of OSX, Windows, and even AOS4.x and Linux will always influence some people. If the MOS team could lower the license fee so it could be closer by comparison to the other OSes, it will psychologically easier for some people to justify the purchase, even though the comparison is totally irrelevant.

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I have not paid for any new versions on my EFIKA, they have all been free updates, so I don't know what you are referring to, unless it is the cost to upgrade from version 1.4 to 2.0 and above, but I would think that everyone can understand that 2.0 was a big change that required a lot of work and should be seen like switching from Windows2000 to WindowsXP, or from OSX Tiger to Leopard.

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I totally agree that more marketing must be done, specially now that we have common hardware that everyone can find at a decent price and the fact that MOS2.4 flat out flies on the MacMini. Showing anyone a comparison of OSX Tiger, or Leopard to MOS2.4 on the same MacMini will be enough to impress even the worst skeptics. The lack of software is a problem, but there are enough apps and entertaining games to show that the viewer will not be left with the impression that there is NO software available. As well as more and better marketing of MOS2.4 on the MacMini, we desperately need to acquire more developers to write more and better apps and games. Getting developers interested in such a tiny niche market is more difficult, as the return on their investment of time coding will obviously be much lower, unless they can also compile there work for other platforms, so this is where we need to promote things like Cubic IDE, Hollywood, Hollywood Designer, gcc, etc. which can help in allowing development across multiple platforms, so we can show that any developer can include MOS (AOS4.x and AROS too) as part of his target audience, to increase his profits and as a way to draw him/her into a world of better computing.

I will begin to promote MOS2.4 on MacOSX sites everyday and I hope that almost everyone here will do the same, but please do it responsibly, so people will be curious and interested in finding out what MOS2.4 is, not in an argumentative way, where you are stating how much better MOS2.4 is than MacOSX (because it is not, but maybe someday it will be, if we can ever make a comeback and get the investment capital and extra MOS Dev Team members that are needed to progress).

> there is a good chance that 2.5 will run on the eMac and PowerBook, and maybe
> even the iBook.

No, unfortunately not. It was said that v2.5 probably won't support other Apple gear beside Mac mini.